Archive for Flight

Skyline punctured by silhouettes
Tiny holes of nothing wheeling, diving
Carving strange and wonderful curves
Patches of night in bird shapes
Defying the rising sun
Left behind are the weight of thought or memory
Wingtips trailing feathery clouds
Inky fingering postscripts along the horizon
Treatises upon the marvel and freedom
Of bodies suspended upon oceans of clear air.

I took my daughters to the park this afternoon and as I was watching them run about and play a memory of my own youth came back to me, which was the main inspiration for this piece. I remembered how when you were a kid, if you grabbed the corners of your jacket and held your arms out straight and apart behind you so that the fabric was taught between them, you could fly. You could start running and just feel as if the ground was actually falling away from your feet, run until you were giddy with the speed and for all intents and purposes you were soaring over the woods and fields and lakes. It was real for you, just as real as the gravity you seemed to defy. I write a lot about dreams, and about the sense of wonder because I think these two things are vitally important and are lost so easily as we are battered by the tides of every day life, of bills, work, relationships, politics, and all the little ways we can be reminded of how cruel, hard, and arbitrary all of what we encounter in this existence. As I watched my girls and enjoyed my own reminiscence I was as always struck by how magical a thing the mind of a young person is, that it can encompass so much belief and joy in the simplest things, transforming them into acts of adventure, of such completely exuberant life. So, when we came home, these words were there, waiting for me. I think that they are a fitting addition to the one year anniversary of a site dedicated to my professional dreaming and I hope that as you read them, you too out there may be reminded of running with your jacket behind you, or whatever other acts of wonder you might have committed as a child. The last thing I feel I should mention was that there were three songs as well and their effect on me that were lesser inspirations for this piece, “Take To The Sky” by Tori Amos, “Learing To Fly” by Pink Floyd, and “Given To Fly” by Pearl Jam. I dare anyone to listen to any of those and not think they might take wing. Now, without further ado, here it is…

Today I take to the sky

Forsaking bonds of earth,

To climb ladders of light

Gather arm-fulls of firmament,

Falling upwards into heaven.

Today I take parliament with owls,

Commit to a murder of crows,

Bright eyed feathered carnivals,

Of loops and pirouettes in fool’s motley,

Singing free and pure.

Today I will burn bright

I will be the portent for the birth of princes,

Twisting the stars to write new destinies

Breaking all covenants, loosing all chains

So that the multitude will be free

To dance the ether along with me.

Today I will steal all the hats

From the bowed heads of the upright and righteous,

Make mockery of those who take pride in their grimness,

To show others the buffoonery as they chase their hats like black coated monkeys,

That they know no more truth than the dust their own dreams left

To drift in the cold, empty chambers of their reason.

Today I will forget to be a prisoner of gravity,

Let all raiment of my life fall in fluttering, drab rags,

Plunge naked into the deep blue ocean mirroring sky,

Carving the clouds into lewd clown faces

To shock and confound those that commanded

I look only at my own shoes.

Today I will stand the earth on its head,

My disbelief in the “this is so, this is not so” will give me strength,

emisformake
The blog of my sissy-poo and the person responsible for me creating my own blog…so you can all blame her and while you’re at it check out her fantastically insane levels of creativity and talent